Ministry skips meeting on rice-pledging crackdown
The initial meeting of state agencies intended to expedite cases related to the previous government’s rice-pledging scheme failed to proceed on October 10 after Finance Ministry staff did not show up. Justice Minister Paiboon Koomchaya, who was to chair the meeting, said he did not know why Finance Ministry representatives failed to attend. “I do not know why the ministry did not come. We could not carry on the meeting without a key agency such as the Finance Ministry,” Paiboon said after learning about the absence. The meeting chairman and other participants waited for almost an hour in a meeting room at the Justice Ministry. In his capacity as head of the Anti-Corruption Operation Centre, Paiboon said on October 11 that the next meeting had not yet been scheduled.
